You are Now Free to Move About the Country…

On Aug 8th, 2015 Published By B.J.

Lovely slogan, if you can do it.

In the past I’ve talked about moving around coral infested lagoons when we were in the Tuamotus.  Moving in these waters you need to be able to SEE what is ahead of you.  Just like the Tuamotus, Fiji has really, really lousy charts.  Vast swaths of the country are open patches of water with coral heads, reefs, and tiny islands that pop out at high tide.

NavitiChart

A screen shot of one place we are trying to go. The astute observer will note the lack of numbers and gray “Thar be Dragons” zone in the upper left corner.

Did I mention the charts are lousy?  There are paper charts too, they are about as lousy as the electronic ones.  If you take a look at the chart sample above you will notice a few things.  First, there are very few numbers – no real depth soundings at all anywhere near the outlying islands.  Secondly, for much of the chart the cartography team basically said “We give up” and didn’t even go there.    Sometimes when you see an area with no depth soundings you can zoom the chart in and they will appear as a new chart for the higher resolution appears.

Nope.

And the grey part, when you zoom it in?  Looks like this:

Yeah, that's a screen capture.

Yeah, that’s a screen capture.

Being resourceful, the cruising community has done what it can to make this better.  We share things like “tracks” – the electronic log of where your boat went without landing on any reefs or sinking and known good way points and routes. I can import a track into my navigation software then convert it directly to a course I can follow, or use it as a guideline.

To make the process more terrifying sometimes the Tracks actually appear to cross land or those large green splotches, which refer to areas that are supposed to dry out at high tide.  With a 4-5 foot tidal range here, we avoid those with our eight foot draft though they offer excellent snorkeling.  We have traveled here in Fiji right over those awful looking green patches and still had the depth sounder returning sixty or more feet of water under them; its a special kind of feeling that really gets you ready for cocktail hour.  So all the chart pictures are a little suspect.

The sun is very important in this process.  On a clear sunny day with the sun over head or behind you you can see the coral patches and reefs miles away sometimes.  They are obvious, you can’t miss them.  You can easily see the depth of the water as it goes from deep cobalt blue to green and brown, and you can SEE rocks and coral features under you when it gets shallow.  Which is both helpful and disconcerting

CoralHeadSunOn an overcast day, in the rain, or late in the day with the sun in front of you – all bets are off.  The reefs and shallow patches – which generally are not on the charts – can be quite tough to spot.

So we have options.  One would be to take some other cruiser’s Track, convert it into a course, and tell the autopilot to follow it exactly.  The autopilot is actually pretty good at that, unless you have a lot of strong current.  This can work, though I don’t care to rely completely on my instruments and the work of someone else I don’t know to get me there safely.

So you take a superabundance of caution.  The basic rules are –

  • Try to move between 10:00 a.m. and get where you are going no later than 4:00 p.m.  Too early or too late and the sun angles are not good.
  • Do your best to arrive with the sun at your back; this is quite hard to do and tough to plan ahead for.
  • Use the tracks of others for guidelines, but you still must trust your eyes.
  • EVERYONE helps watch when we suspect the presence of reefs or tight passages.
  • When it looks really hairy we send an observer to the bow with a radio to watch for reefs and talk to the helmsman.
  • Avoid traveling when rain or excessive cloud cover are in the forecast.

And speaking of the weather…the accuracy of the maps here in Fiji seems surpassed only by that of the weather forecasts.  You’d hate to leave on a sunny morning, only to find out when you are two hours from your destination still the clouds have moved in, the wind has picked up and visibility has gone to the dogs.  Never mind LEAVING for someplace when the conditions are like that.

Why am I whining about all this?

Well, because we’ve been trying to move for about a week now.  Between a combination of poor planning, days where the weather is predicted to be rainy and cloudy but isn’t, days where it is supposed to be sunny but isn’t, and vital tools like depth sounders ceasing to function (on the best travel day all week)  as we are getting ready to leave it’s just been a clown show of being stuck in one place when we could have moved several times.

Fortunately, we’re cruisers.  We have time and patience and no deadlines.  And there are actually a bunch of nice restaurants where we land the dinghy and a town nearby so we shall persevere in the face of this trauma.

Today’s weather summary reads “Mainly cloudy. A few peeks of sunshine possible. High 79F. Winds SSE at 10 to 20 mph.”  As best we can tell that will translate to “Brilliantly sunny, Winds N 20 knots” because the forecast I see shows we shouldn’t move today at all.  But out the window the skies are blue and we hope to move.  Of course it looks kinda cloudy out in the direction we’re headed…

TodayWeather

Today’s forecast. Looks sunny, right?

 

Posted in Fiji, Reefs, shoals, weather | Comments Off on You are Now Free to Move About the Country…

And Then There Were Three…

On Aug 4th, 2015 Published By B.J.

This has been a tough post to write, I think it has taken me a week just to get my feelings under control enough to write it without getting too mawkish.  Apologies in advance if I can’t control myself anyway.

Will at the top of New Zealand

Will at the top of New Zealand showing just how far it is to London

Last Tuesday we put Will on a plane for the U.S., he will stay there until he heads to college in the fall; we will not see him again until the Christmas holidays.  We are all deeply saddened by this.  After pressing full-time plus to finish high school on schedule we had planned to have a few solid months together just to explore, play and cruise without the daily routine of school, tests and responsibilities.  A “Last Summer Break” together before he left us for college and life.

IMG_0562

Unfortunately due to the whims and fancies of politicians and international relations this was not to be.  To attend school in the U.K. one must have a special class of student visa, and it is an immutable requirement that to get this visa one must absolutely apply from one’s “Country of Residence.”  In this case it is the U.S., even though we’ve only spent about five weeks there in the last three years.  IMG_2711We are just “visitors” everywhere we go, with Visitor visas and no established residency.  Even if we could do the application from Fiji the rules require that your passport be shipped to the British Consulate in New York for several weeks before they return it – a manifestly BAD idea when you are out of the country.  And if there was a problem we would then no longer have time to get the Visa in time for school.

IMG_8060So on a weeks notice, after exhausting every possibility to waive these rules, we realized we had no choice but to send Will to the U.S. at the end of July instead of seeing him off to school from the boat in mid-September as we’d expected.

I think every parent dreads the moment their kids will move out not long after they pick up that tiny baby in the hospital.  After you instantly fall in love with them it starts to dawn on you that they will leave someday.  It doesn’t loom so large when they are learning to walk, or ride a bike or sail.  You start to feel it more as they grow into young men and women with their own distinct adult-like preferences and interests.  By high school it is on you full force.

IMG_0866

Eighteen years is not really quite enough time to accept this.

Given that before we left our general plans were to “get to New Zealand and hopefully Australia before Will leaves for college” his departure has always been in the back of our mind, which is one reason these last three years with him have been so special.  By the time kids turn into teenagers a lot of parents don’t get to see them become adults up close.  This is something I am glad to have experienced.

IMG_7238The separation will be a bit more challenging from the boat than if we lived in the states and he was attending an American school.  With twelve time zones between us he is pretty much literally on the opposite side of the world; when he is getting up for classes in the morning we will be cleaning up after dinner.  We’re going to want to call him in the morning (for us) when he will be studying or at the pub with some of his mates.  Getting “home” for him will be a different chore every time, taking 24 to 48 hours of travel and earning almost enough miles for another ticket to somewhere.  I think Will will have “Medallion” status on AAdvantage before he even registers for classes this fall. But we’ll deal; these are the decisions we have made for what we think is best in our lives – I wouldn’t trade the outcome for anything, and I’ll try my best not to whine too much.

IMG_8490We will miss him a lot – not just because our son and we love his sense of humor and wry commentary and quick wit, or because he’s good company for his sister, or a huge help around the boat, or a good sailor that makes us sail faster.  It’s all those things and a lot more.  But he’s not gone, he’s just growing up which of course as a parent is what you always hope your kids will do well.

I’m going to keep the “Two Adults, Two Teenagers, One Boat” tag line for a bit longer still.  He will always be a part of our crew no matter where he is, and he will come back to visit us on some of his breaks so we will sail together again not too far in the future.

skimmar2kids

Posted in Family, mental adjustment, Milestones | 4 Comments

Media Shout Out – Boats and Outboards!

On Aug 4th, 2015 Published By B.J.

We wanted to take a brief moment to thank the folks at Boats and Outboards for selecting Sail Evenstar as one of their “Top 20 Sailing Blogs” in a recent feature on their site.  They found us somehow – thanks for looking!

Boats and Outboards is “The UK’s Number One Marketplace for Boats and Yachts“.

BoatsOutboardsUK

Thanks again for the mention!

 

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Three Years Out

On Jul 23rd, 2015 Published By B.J.

Evenstar leaving Greenwich Bay for the last time. Thanks Betsy Rafferty for the picture!

No matter which side of the dateline you are on now its been three years since we slipped the lines and went cruising.  The date was Sunday, July 22nd, 2012 that we actually cast off the lines from Brewer’s marina in Greenwich Bay and didn’t look back.

When we left our plans were “cross the Pacific and get to New Zealand and maybe Australia before Will goes off to college.”

Dune surfing with family in New Zealand

Dune surfing with family in New Zealand

Well its three years later we’ve been to New Zealand though we haven’t made it to Australia, we are now bracing ourselves to send Will off to college.

More friends

More friends along the way

For three years we’ve seen and done some amazing things.  Swimming with sharks, sailing with whales, swimming with dolphins, climbing volcanoes, touring swamps, attending carnivales and new celebrations like Divali, tasting countless new types of foods, meeting so many new people, seeing rare and endangered animals, having visits from family and friends, shopping in open air food markets, touring LOTR movie sites, surfing down sand dunes, camping, home schooling, snorkeling, learning new drinks, dancing with the locals, buying food from the fields at an organic farm, missing our families, catching large fish, traversing the Panama Canal, hiking in jungles – the list goes on and on.

New friends in St. Lucia after a day of sailing.

New friends in St. Lucia after a day of sailing.

Cycling in the Galapagos

Cycling in the Galapagos

It has been a fantastic experience and we have no regrets, though we can say with certainty there are a LOT of places we could have spent a LOT more time.  From the Maine to the Caribbean to Central America and the South Pacific I can count on one hand the number of places we were happy to move on from – and even some of those were because we were there so long that we wanted to see something else.  Even the long stay places we would love to go back to  – like St. Martin (six weeks there), Panama (four months), and French Polynesia (six months).  And the

Dinner in St. Martin with my parents.

Dinner in St. Martin with my parents.

places we missed – we only caught part of the Caribbean and didn’t make it to Costa Rica just to name a couple.  There is still so much of the world to see.

Has it all been drinking rum drinks under a palm tree on a beach and listening to ukeleles?  No, of course not.

We’ve had our fair share of challenges, difficulties and hard work.  It is a very common misconception that we are on a permanent “Holiday”, that this is one long vacation and we play all day, every day.  Nothing could be further from the truth, as the day-to-day parts of living still need to be done.  You are just doing them someplace different, which is wonderful in some ways but provides its own challenges in other ways.

And sometimes the work is more than we can do.

And sometimes the work is more than we can do.

Certainly things like fixing the boat – a never ending to-do list – are much, much easier in the U.S., where West Marine is ten minutes way, Defender will get you what you need for a reasonable price the next day and if you have really painted yourself in a corner you can find a skilled professional to try and bail you out.  On a remote atoll in the South Pacific, in Panama, or on a Caribbean island you don’t have quite the same resources at your fingertips and what you can get costs you a lot more.  If it breaks you have to fix it or find a way around it, somehow.

Camping in the Puketi Forest, NZ

Camping in the Puketi Forest, NZ

Routine tasks that those living in a house take for granted can become big deals on the boat.  When you turn on the tap water comes out, when you turn on a light there is power – we have to make our own water and electricity; it is not hard, but it is another checklist item on the “To Do” list.  To do a load of laundry you can just go to the basement and toss it in the washer and resume your day; it isn’t a full day commitment that requires enough change to pull your pants off your hips.  Grocery shopping from your house is generally a short task where you can actually find everything on your list while engaging only one form of land transportation; shopping for us usually involves a full day commitment with buses, walking, taxis and visits to multiple stores and markets.

Don’t even get me started on school!  That is our largest time consumer, and the number one reason for some of the things we’ve missed.

Getting our Panama hats in Panama City.

Getting our Panama hats in Panama City.

Is it a whine?  No – it is an observation, life goes on.  Its not all palm trees and blender drinks, but we do get to see and do a lot more than anyone locked into the land bound 9 to 5 lifestyle.  We spend a lot more time doing basic things like laundry and shopping than the land bound do, but we also have more leisure time.  And a LOT fewer bills, without a house and cars with all that insurance, jobs to dress for, and all the other obligations that come with a normal lifestyle.

Danielle and Kathy dressed for a birthday dinner on shore in Grenada.

Danielle and Kathy dressed for a birthday dinner on shore in Grenada.

What would we do differently?  The biggest thing would be to have done it sooner.  Three years with Will wasn’t enough time, though we still have Danielle for a few more years  there is a lot that he will miss out on.  We waited for a more opportune financial moment, then we realized it was now or never to do it with the kids and had to pull the trigger.  Timing-wise we could have put our house up for sale earlier and got the whole process moving when the kids were younger and more likely to be out here with kids their own age.  Though at the time it seemed risky, and mentally we still weren’t ready to commit that firmly at that point in our lives.

Divali in Trinidad.

Divali in Trinidad.

There are a few places we’d do differently too.  For example we really missed the Caribbean coast of Panama, it is supposed to be lovely and we didn’t even realize it until we got there.  We loved that side of Panama, but we made a plan to cross through the Canal then go to the U.S. on a certain time frame.  In hindsight it wouldn’t have cost much more to leave the boat on the North side of the canal and cruise there before heading to Panama city.  Just one example of how with some hindsight we can see how we would have handled things differently.  We would have spent less time in Grenada and more in Trinidad too, but we can’t know things like how much more we liked Trinidad that we expected to until we got there.

But it has been a fantastic three years and we look forward to keeping on sailing, though we will miss our best crew member when he heads off to the U.K.

Will at the Northern tip of New Zealand. Quite a ways to the U.K. from here.

Will at the Northern tip of New Zealand. Quite a ways to the U.K. from here.

So where do we go from here?  That is the subject of another post, but here are a few more pictures from the last three years.

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Posted in Milestones | 5 Comments

Frankenfreezer

On Jul 13th, 2015 Published By B.J.

Sometimes you just have to FIX some things.

Readers may recall we’ve had some struggles with out freezer, mostly relating to it leaking refrigerant – that actually seems fixed.  There is one other design flaw in it that also causes occasional troubles in the tropics – we can’t open the fool thing.  Basically it freezes shut.  This unfortunately is due to way it is made and the attempt to make it pretty; you know, match the aesthetic interior of the boat.

Well that’s all over.

Lifting eye ring from the freezer.

Hallberg-Rassy uses a lovely mahogany all over the inside of the boat, all the furniture, cabinetry and woodwork is well done and high quality.  Once upon a time the top of the freezer matched all that lovely woodwork, with a nice stainless steel ring pull that you’d put your finger through to gently pull up the freezer lid.  The refrigerator, by comparison, is embedded in the hard white corian-like substance on the galley counters – there is no wood and no problems.  But the freezer door is a three+ inch thick sandwich of Mahogany plywood with foam in the middle of it.  And that ring isn’t so comfy to stick your finger into if you need to apply any actual force to it.

When we first arrived in the tropics we noticed the freezer had started to sweat.  We thought it might be inadequate insulation so we carefully laid a thick folded towel on it for more insulation.  Mistake…this made it sweat even more.  The constant sweating started causing some problems, notably cracks in the varnish around the base of the door, and the presence of moisture between the sides of the freezer and the angled side of the lid.  Never mind what this was doing to the finish on top of the freezer.

Water, of course, freezes.  And the stickiness of the door began.  Add that to the intrusion of some moisture through the cracks in the varnish and the additional humidity of just being in the tropics and you also get a little swelling.

We tried a number of approaches.  We added foam insulation around the bottom of the door to help hold in moisture and cold.  This helped the sweating, but the foam needs to be changed from time to time when it gets compressed.  We added a string to the finger loop for more leverage (with less pain…), then we passed a lever through the string or used a T-handle from the engine room door.  Over night it would swell and freeze up, the next day a firm tug would free it up.  When the string broke we replaced it with a piece of Spectra (really tough string!).  Eventually the first pull ring broke and I jury-rigged a metal loop to it so that we could still pull on it while we awaited a replacement ring.  When we found a replacement ring fitting we were back to the original setup and had to re-add the spectra string for leverage.  But we could use a little T-handle to open it up, that provided enough grip and leverage.  Until two nights ago.

Two nights ago was pizza night, and someone was also looking for a Martini at cocktail hour.  The freezer Would. Not. Budge.  Not one bit.  Given that the cheese, pepperoni, bacon, martini shakers, ice and other crucial dinner ingredients were trapped in the freezer this was becoming critical.  So I pulled harder and ripped the ring pull and its three screws right out of the wood.

No problem!  We have some five minute epoxy – I can put some wood back in the threads of the old holes, squish some epoxy in and an hour later to cure, presto!  It’s slightly harder to completely rip the ring pull off the next time I try and open it.  This thing is STUCK!

Oh yeah, that's MY carpentry work!

Oh yeah, that’s MY carpentry work!

Eventually it dawns on me that this is not opening any time soon without extraordinary effort, and we will need to do some cabinetry work on this at some time in the near future.  Although I am terrible at working with wood in the sense of making not look ugly when I’m done, I can hire a carpenter like the best of them.  So I decided up a solution that is within my limited carpentry skills.  A metal repairing panel, a few screws, and we’re back to the ring and spectra solution.  For the curious, the “leverage” does double duty as the handle to pump the hydraulic backstay/vang adjuster.

Kathy demonstrates proper opening of the Frankenfreezer

Kathy demonstrates proper opening of the Frankenfreezer

Lovely, isn’t it?  Martinis and pizza all around…

 

HELP WANTED:  Competent finish carpenter to undo my handiwork.  Rates negotiable, bring own tools.

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Malolo Lailai (or Musket Cove)

On Jul 7th, 2015 Published By B.J.

A few miles out of  Port Deneau lie the Malolo islands, a gorgeous complex  of reefs and islands surrounded by stunning green and blue waters.  On the smaller Malolo island, Malolo Lailai (or “Little Malolo”), hosts several resorts and the famous Musket Cove Yacht Club.

Joining a New Yacht Club

The requirements to join the Musket Cove Yacht Club are stringent – to be eligible one must have sailed to Musket Cove (and Fiji) from a foreign port and pay the onerous $5.00 FJD membership does.  This grants the skipper a lifetime membership in the yacht club.  Crew memberships are an additional $10 FJD; apparently even a few years ago these charges were $1 and $5 FJD respectively…inflation runs rampant!

As has been pointed out elsewhere joining is both really easy and really hard – easy because all you do is fill out a form and give over your $5.00 (about $2.50 US).  Hard because before you do that you have to sail your yacht to Fiji which is out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean so its kind of like getting a merit badge to get your lifetime membership card.

But this could be the deal of the century, because the yacht club is located on the grounds of the Musket Cove Resort.  This is a full featured resort with pools, restaurants, a store and water sports.  Yacht club members can use many of the facilities for free, and may join in other activities where appropriate for a modest charge so long as we don’t annoy the marina guests.  The yacht club itself sits on its own little sandy island and offers reasonably priced drinks, coin operated grills, and an atmosphere that is tough to beat.

Snorkeling and More

By cocktail hour last night pretty much all of us were both starving and about ready to drop off where we were sitting.  It had been a busy day.

We started with breakfast on the boat then went in to check out the facilities.  When we arrived the day before it was blowing 30 knots in the harbor, not only was it difficult to anchor in those conditions but no one wanted to take the dinghy in for a wet, bumpy ride.

After walking around a bit and finding out where we had to conduct our exhaustive yacht club application process we stopped by Dick’s restaurant in the marina for a well-earned cool drink.  After returning to the boat we decided to do some swimming and snorkeling, after dropping the Pudgy in the water for Will.

On the horizon we could see a structure – Cloud9 bar – a two level floating bar and pizza grill anchored a couple of miles off shore on Rooroo Reef.  Will set his sights on sailing there for a cold one, and we decided to meet him later by dinghy.

After a couple of false starts we found a nice reef to snorkel on.  The challenge is that the water is deep – 50-60 feet around most of the cove, except in close to the reef patches where the water shallows out.  Sometimes it gets too shallow, and we didn’t want to anchor the dinghy someplace then come back to find it sitting high and dry on the reefs if the wind changed.

Snorkeling was a success.  The huge and complex coral structures were a delight to see.  The fish life was varied and plentiful, though we didn’t see any really big fish or sharks there were hundreds and hundreds of colorful reef fish all around.  The highlight was a brightly colored Banded Sea Snake that Danielle spotted as we were almost done for the day.  Although these are some of the most venomous snakes in the world they do not have a reputation for being aggressive, and are considered quite docile.  We kept our distance and took pictures.

Off to Cloud9

A few weeks ago a friend sent me a link to a floating bar in Fiji that looked…enticing.  After checking the reviews and the location I realized that we’d be passing in sight of it with our plans to come to Musket Cove.  So how can you not stop in for a cold one?

2015_0707_11511800-001Will started our earlier in the day intending to sail out in the Pudgy.  The winds turned out to be light and variable and he did a lot of rowing along with the sailing.  It was slow enough so he hadn’t arrived yet by the time we returned from snorkeling and raised him on the radio.  After taking a few minutes to clean up and make some way points in the GPS Kathy and I headed out to join him.  Danielle declined this time, snorkeling was pretty tiring and I suspect that she preferred some quiet time to visiting another bar with us.

2015_0707_12161300It took Will several hours of sailing and rowing to get out to Cloud9.  It took us about twenty minutes to zip out there in the dinghy with just the two of us on board.

We arrived to find the place slowly emptying out, and to find Will enjoying a cold Fiji Bitter beer and chatting with one of the local boat crews.

2015_0707_12072300What can you say about a place like this?  Lovely in its simpleness – you are on a floating platform anchored two miles from land.  Surrounded by coral reefs, you can spend the day swimming, snorkeling, jumping in from the upper decks, or enjoying the various drinks and pizzas offered at the bar.  A few day beds for relaxing, along with chaise lounges and swing chairs complement a few tables on both levels.  Crystal clear light blue water surrounds you as gentle music swells and the breezes cool you off.

Are the drinks cheap?  Its a floating bar, off a resort island, several miles from the mainland.  Of course its not a cheap place to have a beer – but it’s not that expensive either.  Its no more expensive than some of the places we walked past in Port Denerau and many other places we’ve visited.  But you aren’t buying the beer, you are buying the location.  And the atmosphere – that is pretty tough to put a price on.

Posted in Fiji | Comments Off on Malolo Lailai (or Musket Cove)

You are Here – Port Denarau, Fiji

On Jul 4th, 2015 Published By B.J.

We’ve not actually seen much for Fiji so far.  We arrived here from New Zealand all in a rush to make sure we were good for our flight back to the states and ahead of the weather.  When we arrived both kids still had to finish school so we put up a full court press to ge it done before we left for the U.S..   We almost made it, and both kids wrapped it up quickly.  But outside of some trips to the market in Suva and going to dinner we didn’t actually see that much.  We sailed the boat from Suva to the other end of Viti Levu to Port Denarau near the town of Nadi where the main airport in Fiji is located.

Of course we took a day to sail, then it was noses back to the grindstone to finish school and get the boat ready before we left for the states.

It’s actually a lovely facility here, and a major stepping off point for tourists heading to cruises and resorts.  There is lots of shopping, a convenience store and about a dozen decent restaurants.  There are nightly happy hours and a show of Fijian firewalking and dancing.  For $1.00 Fiji (about $.50 USD) one can take a bus into Nadi and go to the excellent market.  The island is developed into high end resorts and waterfront housing and is quite well done.  The marina rates are reasonable and it is secure, and a nice place to stay.

So of course three weeks of the month Evenstar sat here we were off the boat and back in the states instead of in one of the nicest marinas we’ve visited.

Our time here is up on Monday and we will begin our exploration of Fiji in earnest.  Next stop – Malolo Lailai island, which is about 10 miles West and South of here if you use the map below.

Also there are a couple of street level pictures in the attached map.  You can grab the little yellow guy and drag him to any of the blue circles that appear and it will show you street level shots of the area.

Mostly this is an excuse for me to play with a Google Maps plugin, but have fun with it!

Posted in Fiji | Comments Off on You are Here – Port Denarau, Fiji

We’re Ba-ack!

On Jul 3rd, 2015 Published By B.J.

OK, maybe you didn’t notice right off that we were actually gone since I’ve not exactly been Polly Productive out here on the blog, but we were off the boat and back in the U.S. for a few weeks.

Shortly after arriving in Fiji we parked Evenstar at Port Denerau Marina near the town of Nadi on Viti Levu here in Fiji and left to visit friends and family back in the U.S. for a few weeks.  We had a whole host of reasons to go back, with Kathy’s father’s 80th birthday celebration leading the list plus other birthdays, graduations, and well…we just hadn’t been back in a while.

While this was obviously planned well in advance I debated about making too big of a deal about it on the blog.  The primary reason for the radio silence of course is security – I just didn’t want to make a huge production about leaving Evenstar empty for three weeks.  Although the Port Denerau Marina is a secure place it isn’t impenetrable and there was just no mroe sense advertising we weren’t home than there would be leaving your house empty with a “see you all in three weeks” sign on the front porch.

A Nice Visit

Our last visit to the states was over the Christmas holiday in 2013.  The general consensus after that trip was – “What were we thinking?”  It was cold and snowy and we had to borrow clothes and warm stuff when we stepped of the plane; it was 90 degrees when we boarded in Panama.  But more importantly the U.S. is simply an insane place in the month of December.  People are so focused on the impending holidays that they don’t have time to relax and just visit with you.  Tense, stressed and running around just isn’t our style any more.  Too many parties, too much shopping, too many places to be, too many ads and too much noise, and way too many obligations to really make “quality time”.  People were so busy we didn’t see half the folks we hoped to when we were there.  So we left feeling tired, cranky, cold and dissatisfied.

Where we used to live in Rhode Island is a blissful place in the summer, the weather is perfect and there is loads of natural beauty, oceans, beaches and so on. People go there in the summer because it is a nice place to be, unlike the snow and slush blasted wasteland we visited two years previously in the summer it is just a delightful spot.  Why it didn’t occur to us to make our visit in the summer when we love it there is beyond  me.

But more importantly with the school year wound down and summer ramping up people were just ready to…chill.  Which was nice.  My parents rented a place at the shore, my in-laws already own one where we stayed – and people had time.  Time to sit on the porch with a drink and talk, time to enjoy a leisurely meal and so on.  We had nice family gatherings on both sides of the family and caught up with people we missed in our last visit.  Lots of laughs and hugs and good times.  Our only regret was that we didn’t plan to stay for another week or two.

Can you go home, really?

There is still a lot to get used to heading back stateside after almost three years abroad.  The pace of life is still very different.  Consumerism is a strong force “back home”, with so much advertising and so many varieties of products and goods available.  Part of that we caused ourselves of course, being abroad so long there are many things we’ve not had easy access too and certain things are much cheaper and we came back with a long shopping list of things we needed for ourselves and the boat.  So we ended up doing clothes shopping, electronics shopping, getting new phones and tablets and shirts and a whole pile of stuff for the boat.  Considering I think Best Buy is a terrible place to buy consumer electronics it felt like we went there about twenty time.  We left Fiji with very little – three duffel bags – two small and one large one that wasn’t very full.  Coming back we had two suitcases and two large duffel bags loaded to within ounces of the 50 pound weight limit as well as extra carry on bags for everyone.

There are things we definitely miss about the states above and beyond just the people.  There are some foods that just aren’t right elsewhere – not fast food, you can get that anywhere.  But the U.S. really needs to work on spreading the Buffalo Chicken Pizza concept IMHO.  It is nice to be able to walk into a grocery and find everything you need, and having many options to choose from to fill your shopping list is nice.  On the whole though, it can be pretty overwhelming if you have stepped away from the noise and the bustle.  So it was welcoming…sort of…but since we don’t have a house there any more and things have changed a lot coming back to the boat still feels more like home.

What was in the bags?

In truth not everything we shopped for came back with us, much of it was college shopping for Will and was left in the states to be sent to the U.K. when he arrives in September.  But how did we fill up all those bags with 198 pounds of checked baggage?

  • New jib sheets.  170′ of 3/4″ line.  Neither light or compact.
  • Two new monstrously large snatch blocks
  • Two pumps
  • A new control head for the autopilot
  • A bunch of oil booms (can’t seem to buy these anywhere)
  • Many new clothes for everyone
  • Shoes to do Imelda proud
  • Cabin fans
  • A toilet seat (seriously…the $45 Jabsco seat in the U.S. was $230 NZ bucks)
  • Oil, air and fuel filters for the new generator.  $7.95 oil filter in the U.S. cost us $35 in NZ.
  • 24V voltage regulator for the engine alternator
  • Various smaller rigging bits and parts (the box from the rigger alone weighed 45 pounds with the sheets)
  • Computer parts

Kathy did a masterful job packing our four checked bags, hitting 49, 49, 50 and 50 pounds.  Of course, we were allowed 4 x 50 lb bags on the way there, and didn’t find out until we checked in that we were allowed 8 x 50  lb bags on the way back!  A bit too late for that last-minute shopping…even though all the airports have lots of stores.

 

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The Clearance Hurdles 1500m Event

On May 26th, 2015 Published By B.J.

Well, we’re here.  Right now we are anchored off the Royal Suva Yacht Club in the city of Suva which is the largest population center in Fiji.  Checking in here is an arduous process that took the better part of two days to get completed.

The Hurdle-thon

Day One

  • Arrive around 0800 on Monday morning and contact Port Control and the Royal Suva Yacht Club to arrange clearances.
  • RSYC calls back and tells us clearance will happen at 2:00 p.m.  I’m sure happy at this point that we time our entrance to the harbor for right after all the offices open so we can clear early.
  • Around 11:30 a.m a fellow from the Health Department comes out and does the health inspection.
  • Nothing, until well after 3:00 when the clearance team shows up.  Readers might recall we were trying to get here in working hours to avoid overtime charges…they all go home at 4:00  They cleared a boat that arrived hours after us before coming to our boat, but I guess they were in the area at 2:00.
  • The gentlemen are very nice, but the process seems to take longer because we are pretty honest about what we have on board in terms of meats, alcohol, and other stores they are concerned about.  It seems that simply saying “nope, no bacon and 6.75 liters of booze right here” would have sped up the process, but we don’t work that way.  We’ve never thought it wise or respectful to play fast with the rules so we report what is really there.
  • The customs officer determines we have a little too much booze and “seals” three unopened bottles of gin in a locker with official seals.  The booze limit is 2.25L per person over the age of 17 – our motley collection of half finished bottles might add up to that but the new ones put it over.  We are told we need to come in to Customs the next day and pay Duty on the three bottles since they couldn’t figure the Duty for us on the spot.
  • Since we have no Fiji currency we are given invoices and told where to go to pay fees to Biosecurity and Health, and told we need to visit the Office of Tribal Chiefs to get a cruising permit and then come to Customs for an inward clearance.

Day two

We have a list of clearing tasks for Day Two, but Day Two is also Will’s eighteenth birthday so we have a few other things we need to accomplish.  After a nice birthday breakfast, it was off to town for us and off to find eggs for the Birthday Cake crew.

Things to finish to get our clearance include:

  • Get Fiji dollars.  We need this just to be able to get a cab to town.
  • Pay the Biosecurity Fees
  • Pay the Health Fees
  • Pay the Royal Suva Yacht Club fee for their part in the process
  • Acquire a “Cruising Permit”
  • Get an “Inward Clearance”, for which the Cruising Permit and all the receipts for the other fees must be presented.
  • Pay the Duty on the gin.

Getting the money and the eggs was easy, there is an ATM a bit down the road from RSYC and an easy walk, followed shortly by a convenience store with eggs available.  We got the cash, got the eggs, and split up with the women heading back to the boat and the men plunging forward into the bureaucratic abyss.

“Don’t even let anyone tell you that clearing into a new country is a glamorous process” – B.J. to Will

Our first stop, King’s Wharf – the main commercial shipping entry point for the entire country.  Here we should be able to find Biosecurity (the people that worry about your incoming stores that are NOT booze or smokes) and Customs (the people that are concerned about your booze).  We thought first to head to Biosecurity, so we stopped at the security checking and picked up a security officer who took us on a long walk through the port to the Biosecurity office.

Who were all at lunch, because it was 1:15 pm.  Lunch is 1:00-2:00, silly me.  So we walked all the way back through the port.  None of our tasks would be doable now, so we stopped and picked up our local cell phone SIM cards and internet access, then walked back to the King’s Wharf.  We paid Biosecurity, but realized that we had to finish everything else before seeing customs.

After asking directions we were told we’d need to take a cab to the I Taukei Affairs Board (TAB) at the Great Council of Chiefs building, but the Ministry of Health was “just up that way”.  I’m not sure where he was pointing, because we couldn’t find it and eventually asked in another government building for directions.   “Take a cab” apparently was the clearest direction we could get.

So we jumped in a cab, but had him take us to the Great Council of Chiefs, where the driver promptly dropped us at the wrong entrance of the wrong building.  A little exploring and around the block and we found the right office.  They were very quick at the TAB, and we had a completely incomprehensible letter in Fijian in our hands in about ten minutes.  Back outside, and we were off in another cab to the Health Department.

Once again, after being dropped at the wrong door at the wrong building we found our way in.  At this point I’m watching the clock, as it is around 3:00 and the government offices all close at 4:00 as we know.  Upstairs to the Health Department and we meet the nice fellow who was first on our boat on Monday.   He fills out some forms and hands me a bill for FJD $182.50.  Now I am in this office because I didn’t have $FJD when I arrived the day before, I am supposed to be there solely to make this payment.  I hand him $190 in Fijian currency and he disappears for about ten minutes.  (Right now $1.00 USD is about $2.00 FJD)

Finally he comes back and is apologetic – nobody has any change in the office.  We aren’t sure how to pay this.  Briefly I debate just saying “keep the change” and internally contemplate the wisdom of expecting cash payment on an odd amount like $182.50 without keeping cash on had to make change.  Why not just make the fee $180, or $185 or $190?  Will and I decide to run to a small market and get a bottle of water or something to break the $10 bill he handed me back.  Of course the odd little market doesn’t actually have any chilled drinks anywhere except for some off looking protein things so we grabbed a pack of gum ($1.50) and rush back with out $2.50 in coins.  Done!

Then it’s another cab and back to King’s Wharf for our third visit.  The security guys and I are practically exchanging Christmas cards and family pictures by this point as we’ve been hanging around there so much.  The Customs office is at the end of a twisting walk through some dead machinery, a bunch of dusty cars that are probably stuck in paperwork limbo, then up a flight of stairs.  We are dropped in Customs, tell someone our problem then are whisked through a “Staff Only” door by some of the nice fellows who came to the boat Monday.

This is getting close to the end of the day now, around 3:45 and the place is emptying fast.  As I sit down there are two people helping me, they ask for all the requisite paperwork which I give them and ask me a few confusing questions.  Like “When are you leaving Suva?”   “I don’t know, I just got here” I reply.  Confusion ensues…I’m trying to get an “Inward Clearance” and you have to have a date you plan to leave Suva for the computer.  “What islands are you planning to visit?”  “I don’t know” I reply, thinking to myself that there are 322 of them in this country and we really haven’t fixed our agenda quite yet.

As it turns out, as is usually the case the computer systems are geared towards large commercial ships and we small pleasure cruisers are sort of shoe-horned in to the same boxes with more nebulous and dubious answers to questions that don’t mean so much for us.

At some point the gentleman asks me if this is my first time in Fiji, and how did I like the country.  I had to laugh as I told him that we hadn’t gotten cleared until yesterday late and had spent all of today running around to government offices, but the government offices seemed quite nice.

IMG_1660

Sealed cabinet with three captive bottles of gin. We may not open this cabinet until we leave Fiji. Seriously.

All is proceeding nicely and we’re about done.  As they are wrestling with a recalcitrant printer I mention “and we’re supposed to pay the Duty on three bottles of gin, too.”  They stuck the three bottles of gin in a cabinet and put stickers on the door.

This seems to catch them off guard, apparently the “Sealing of the Gin” did not make it to the record about us because no one has a clue.  They start asking about the size of the bottle, how much there is, the percentage alcohol, how much I paid for it ($33 NZD each) – I’m reasonably certain the nice woman doing this was a little fuzzy on what “Gin” actually is.  Eventually I do point out that the fellow that actually sealed up the closet showed me in here and left about 15 minutes ago, so they call him and start filling out forms.

Eventually the customs woman starts making a sort of “not good” face.  “How much” I ask?  Apparently the normal import duty is around 15% plus some other charge of around 5%.  But there is also a FJD $60 per liter surcharge on dutied liquor.  So to get my gin admitted into Fiji was going to cost something like FJD $220+ which is more than the gin cost in the first place.  Arggh, should have gone for the Bombay Sapphire instead of the no-name rotgut.

I ask if they are going to take the gin if I don’t pay.  “That’s an option, or you could seal it.”    “It IS sealed,” I explain.  But it was sealed in a closet quickly with the expectation that we’d free it the next day – there is stuff we will need in that closet and we can’t leave it closed for the next three months!

After some discussion the realize I am asking if they can re-seal it someplace else so we can pick a spot we can close of more carefully, as I’m just not interested in throwing that much money away on duties for gin I might not even drink while here.  After all, we have learned that the tropics are NOT ideal martini conditions as the glass and drink tend to warm up too quickly at these climes anyway – though I do not offer this technical explanation on why, in general, rum drinks with ice are better in the tropics.

“Sure, we can do that.  The fellow can meet you at the Royal Suva Yacht Club right now.”  Oops, so much for the trip to the market and the rest of my errands.  We race through the port and grab a taxi and head to the RSYC.  No customs guy…so we call Evenstar and alert them to what is happening.   After a few more minutes with no Customs guy I call back – he went straight to the boat and was re-sealing the closet as we spoke.

Done!

The Payoff

At the end of the day though, we got it sorted and are now free to move about the country as we please.  Danielle and Kathy joined Will and me at the RSYC, where we hoisted a cold one for Will’s 18th birthday (18 is the drinking age in most countries outside the U.S.) and enjoyed an excellent dinner at the adjacent restaurant.

We have a few more things to settle then we hope to see some of the outlying areas as we move the boat around Suva to Denerau Marina on the West side of Viti Levu.  We are planning to spend about three weeks in the U.S. in June so we will be securing the boat at a marina while we are gone.  But we have another week or two to finish the school year and maybe see a little of the country.

At one point during this Will asked me if it was worse than Panama for clearing in.  Panama was annoying because we shot ourselves in the foot and made mistakes – it was expensive but we could have had it easy if just I’d called my agent before I called my mother to tell her we were safe.  Here in Fiji I do not think there was a way to get all the clearances done in a single day without running all over Suva.  Even if we had Fijian cash on hand and hadn’t had any booze problems we still would have had to go to the TAB for the Cruising Permit and back to Customs for the Inward Clearance.   Cost-wise the various fees added up to around $165 USD, which is less than Panama by a fair amount, but even with everyone speaking English here I think I have to give Fiji a slight nod for biggest nuisance process to date.

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//WL2K Land in Sight! Day 7 to Fiji

On May 23rd, 2015 Published By B.J.

Land Ho!

We’ve been able to see Fiji pretty much all day now. Specifically we an enormous volcanic mountain and the attached land, which we believe to be Kadavu Island with it’s 828 meter peak of Nabukelevu (also called Mt. Washington), an extinct volcano. That is not our destination, however – we are headed initially to the port of Suva on Viti Levu island. Suva is about another seventy miles from the far West end of Kadavu.

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, we are doing our best NOT to arrive today, Sunday the 24th on this side of the dateline. Had we pushed harder all night we could likely have been pulling into Suva around 5:00 or 6:00 p.m. tonight, but for several reasons we’d rather arrive Monday morning when Customs and Immigration are ready to receive us.

It is one of the unfortunate geographic aspects of Fiji that you must sail past many cool islands before you can actually reach a clearance port where you can legally check into the country; it isn’t legal to stop anywhere in a country until you’ve stopped and cleared in. Many do not realize that Fiji is not a single island island, but rather a large archipelago made up of about 332 islands spread over about 274,000 square miles of the South Pacific, only 3% of that is land and not every island is inhabited. Fiji is the name of the country

So first you have to let the government know you are here, and the government is on the two largest islands of Viti Levu and Vanua Levu and that is where most of the administrative offices and officials are. The most remote and untouched parts of Fiji are in the Lau group, which is upwind of the places where you clear in so they don’t get as much traffic stopping there.

So we are pacing ourselves. The wind has all but disappeared and the water is becoming glassy. So we are motoring along a just of an idle make around five and a half knots, which is just the right pace to arrive tomorrow morning in time for Customs & Immigration to get into the office.

Fishless in Paradise

As I type this we are currently getting skunked fishing. We’ve seen a few fish including the big tuna school we sailed through without a line out, but not a Mahi Mahi or tuna or other tasty fish has taken any interest in our bait. This is unfortunate, a fresh caught Mahi meal is something that everyone gets excited about though rolling about in fish guts on the lido deck isn’t generally the highlight of my trip trying to fillet the fool thing.

Settling the Oil Situation

It does look like we’ve pinned down the oil leak situation a bit better. At the time we discovered the leak we had wind, so we only ran the engine for a few minutes to test. I found the problem with the crankcase vent which sorted the oil squirting up from the dipstick.

Last night the wind died, and we finally get a chance to put the engine to a proper test. Given the nature of the problem we wanted to make sure that the engine got checked at least once every watch to see if there was any more leaking. So we ran it, we checked it.

And it leaked.

However, this time it leaked from the bottom of the dipstick tube. This tube actually appears to be a stiff hose which is connected to a hose barb on the side of the engine that leads into the oil pan. And that was where the oil was coming from. Simple enough, there are two hose clamps – all I had to do while hanging over a hot engine in a rocking boat was tighten them up a bit. It turns out they were loose and I could put a few turns on them. Problem easily solved, I wiped the area clean and we ran the engine some more and no more leaks.

It is entirely possible that the entire amount we lost in the first major leak came through this spot. It wasn’t a fast leak, but we were motoring for over thirty hours straight. I am guessing when we took the engine out to be overhauled this was removed and checked and just didn’t get tightened up enough. We’ll keep an eye on it, but we’re good for now.

Which is nice, because not much more than a whisper of wind expected to develop in the next 24 hours we’re motoring the rest of the way.

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